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The Bronx Is Lacking

As a Yankee fan (in case my caricature didn’t give that away), I felt that it was almost my duty to watch the debut episode of ESPN’s new series, The Bronx Is Burning.

I was nine years old during the 1977 season, so I remember a lot of the baseball. Naturally, I also remember the Son of Sam killings and the chaos they caused in New York. But between my age and the dramatic difference in media coverage back then — obvious difference No. 1: no Internet — I didn’t have the same depth of knowledge on either topic that I would have if they occurred today.

So, my impressions of the first installment of The Bronx Is Burning:

The good:

• Lunatic serial killers aside, the 1977 and 1978 baseball seasons fueled my passion for the game and the team, so any look back at that era of Yankees baseball is always fun for me.

• John Turturro is absolutely dead-on in his portrayal of Yankees manager Billy Martin. He has Martin’s facial expressions, dugout pacing and raw emotion nailed down perfectly.

• I really enjoy the mixture of re-creation and game footage. It’s not seamless — that wouldn’t be possible — but I didn’t find it to be a distraction, and I think including the actual game footage adds to the experience.

The not-so-good:

• Reggie Jackson was six feet tall and weighed 200 pounds during his playing career. While he may be a fine actor, Daniel Sunjata looks like he’s about five inches shorter and 60 pounds lighter. It reminded me of Will Smith trying to portray the much more muscular Muhammad Ali in 2001 film Ali. Smith did a great job capturing Ali’s personality and aura, but he looked like half of an Ali during the fight scenes in that film.

• Oliver Platt’s portrayal of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner just isn’t cutting it. It seems way too forced, and it appears that he’s trying to take well-known descriptions of The Boss’ personality and antics, then multiply them by 10.

• I realize that ESPN isn’t CNN or The History Channel. ESPN is a sports network, and I expected The Bronx Is Burning to focus on the Yankees. But the scenes featuring the Son of Sam shootings are almost as intrusive as commercials. It seemed like every 10 minutes or so, someone said, “Hey, aren’t we supposed to put some non-baseball stuff in, too?” The Son of Sam scenes seem to be randomly pasted in, and they almost don’t belong with the rest of the show. It reminds me of the “One of these things is not like the other” game from Sesame Street.

All of that being said, I will definitely watch the rest of the series. For me, the baseball memories outweigh all of the other factors.

Oh, yeah, one more thing: Where’s Graig Nettles?